But now, on Christmas afternoon, as Senator Hartwyck attended desultorily to his legislative paperwork, an uneasy feeling gnawed at his gut. Something that one of the engineers had said about the chances for success. "It is a near one hundred percent certainty that the missiles, at least one of them, will find the target and deflect it from its course."
"A 'near' hundred percent?" one of Hartwyck's senate colleagues had inquired.
"Yes, we can never state any scientific fact with absolute certainty."
"And if it goes awry? What then?"
"Senator, you will not need to call another hearing, that's for certain."
The sparse audience tittered appreciatively, and there was scattered applause. The subcommittee chairman gaveled the room to order, and the young senator from Delaware slipped from the chamber unnoticed. He had walked back to his office that day with the exchange ringing in the back of his mind.
But he couldn't linger too long at his desk—he would be late for dinner at his parents' home in Wilmington. He planned to drive there. Well, no time like the present. He carried his trench coat, just in case it got cold. It was about fifty degrees, warm for early winter, but you couldn't count on weather any more, the patterns and temperature swings were so wide and frequent. Not like when I was growing up, the senator mused.
He would not call his childhood as he remembered it idyllic— the word was not in his normal vocabulary. Nor would he term it privileged. Others certainly would: prep school at Lawrenceville, Yale College and Law School, summers at Rehoboth Beach, a few years in private legal practice, election as state attorney general when he was only twenty-seven, the U.S. Senate four years later. It seemed a predestined path, a gifted existence; almost too easy, he sometimes thought. Who knows how far he would go—president of the United States?
The young senator negotiated the D.C. grid, running through a few red lights (there was sparse traffic, no cops), until he reached the famed Beltway that would carry him to Interstate 95 North and home. He fiddled with the car radio as he merged onto the five-lane asphalt road at sixty miles per hour.
Hartwyck reached for the cellular telephone in the passenger seat—an automatic gesture. Why wouldn't you be on the phone while you were driving, legal or not? He dialed his parents' number. The radio played country music, his favorite cultural vice. He reached over to the glove box and fumbled for a cigarette from the pack he kept there. Many times over the past several years he had tried to quit smoking and failed: sometimes he stayed off for a few weeks, or even a few months. But holidays, and work pressure, and driving—all of these were triggers that made him want a cigarette. He wanted one now.
The car, a two-year-old Audi compact with about nine thousand miles on it, was like a little space capsule into which Hartwyck could escape and speed along the highway of his dreams ... sometimes driving out into the Virginia countryside for miles and miles, where he saw more horses and cattle than human beings. That is what he longed for most, escape, but he didn't know where to or why, couldn't quite put his finger on it.
A news bulletin interrupted the music: "We have been advised by the President and the Federal Emergency Management Agency that all persons must seek shelter immediately. The comet that was headed for Earth may, in fact, approach our atmosphere, causing disruptions in various parts of the world. We do not have word yet on when this might happen, but sources at NASA say it could be within the next several minutes. The likeliest point of contact is the Pacific Ocean off the California coast. We do not know what effect this may have in the Washington, Maryland, Virginia area, but we will monitor the situation closely and keep you informed the best we can. We repeat, the President of the United States and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have announced..."
Hartwyck hugged the far left lane of the Beltway at seventy miles per hour, listening but not comprehending what was being said. In his mind he kept hearing the words "a near one hundred percent certainty ... a near one hundred percent certainty ..." The radio crackled with intense static; he changed stations, but it was the same, AM and FM. Then dead silence.
As he drove, Senator Christopher P. Hartwyck saw a shadow, like an incredibly heavy black cloud, fall over the landscape. He kept driving. As he held to the curve he saw other cars veer off to the right, saw some of them waver and crash into the wall there as drivers panicked. He did not know what to do. He looked through the front windshield into the patch of sky and saw a huge object—a rock? a plane? very large; it seemed as large as the moon, perhaps larger... and it was on fire! It was falling toward Earth, toward him. His heart pounded. He drove on. Seconds later, he and every living thing within a twenty-mile radius was pulverized by the impact of the million-ton fragment.
ISTANBUL, MIDNIGHT, LOCAL TIME, DECEMBER 25
The ancient city, also known through its complex and colorful history as Constantinople and Byzantium, throbbed with life in the darkness that lay like a blanket over the urban landscape of spires, minarets, and tall modern buildings.
Kadijah Raouf Baker walked from the four-story modern office building where she worked as an assistant secretary in a textile-import firm toward the omnibus stop a few city blocks away. She'd had to work an unusual night shift on a special year-end project, so she would be arriving home in the early hours of the morning. Her husband, Necmettin, would have to feed and bathe their twenty-month-old son and put him to bed. He was good that way, and she thanked Allah for Necmettin—a skilled physician, a good and attentive husband, a worthy and decent man.
The street was wet from a day-long rain, and there was a distinct winter chill in the air. Kadijah pulled her hijab—the traditional Muslim woman's headscarf—more closely to her face. She wore a loose-fitting woolen coat and ankle-length, long-sleeved dress, but no gloves; she did not own a pair. She and Necmettin were by no means poor, but they watched their money very carefully and spent little on personal comforts. They owned a fifteen-year-old automobile, a German import with nearly two hundred thousand kilometers on it. Necmettin drove it to and from the hospital and occasionally to the seashore for a family trip ... but fuel and taxes were extremely steep, and often city traffic was so clogged that it did not pay to drive.
Kadijah smiled at the thought of her husband and son safe and snug at home. She would be there soon enough.
She waited at the bus station for more than a quarter hour, her back turned to the biting wind. Headlights and tires played on the slick, rutted street before her in a near-hypnotic rhythm as cars jerked and honked and splashed along. She did not look up the avenue because she knew that would slow the arrival of the bus ... and she laughed silently at her superstitious attitude.
Even with all the hard work and worry in her life, she had faith that Allah watched over her family—including her parents, siblings, and in-laws. All is well in Allah's peace for those who call upon His name. She gripped her canvas bag at her side in a new gust of wet wind. Her own times of personal discomfort or suffering were offered up to Him for the sake of her family and her country. It was expected; it was the will of Allah.
Moments later, Kadijah sat on the swaying open-air, double-level omnibus as it sped along in the sparse after-midnight traffic. Exhaustion pinned her to the bench, and she fought to keep her eyes open. She did not want to sleep past her stop, halfway across Istanbul in a quiet residential district. She looked around at the other passengers on the bus: a shrunken old woman swaddled against the wet chill and the demonic forces of the night, sitting like a brown nut with black eyes, unmoving; a young couple, perhaps in their late teens, snuggling and discreetly holding hands, the girl's face shining, her brows black and tapered, the boy's face smooth and handsome in a childish way; another man, middle-aged, weary like Kadijah herself, hands and face soiled from some kind of heavy labor, but alert and taking in the sights on the bus itself and along the streets. This man watched the young married woman watching him, a look of challenge and interest in his deep-set eyes.
She touched the scarf that c
overed most of her face, finding comfort in the anonymity that it provided at this moment.
The bus rocked suddenly, as if it had hit something, and Kadijah looked up and out the window. The street was covered with water, at least a meter high and rising! But there had been no rain for a few hours ... was this seawater that somehow had risen unexpectedly? In this part of the city? Very unlikely; she had never heard of such a thing before. The driver of the bus attempted to maneuver the vehicle forward, but the water rose rapidly to what seemed to be two meters, then three, and suddenly the bus itself was floating like a boat.
Some of the passengers screamed, but Kadijah remained calm, gripping a nearby pole and swinging around to look out at the streets and buildings. She prayed that her husband and child were safe, that she would soon be able to see them, if the flood had not yet hit her neighborhood. All about the bus, water poured into windows and doorways, sweeping pedestrians off their feet and lifting cars and trucks in its wake. The bus itself rocked and floated and picked up speed as it passed buildings at the second-story level. The young woman could look into some of those buildings and see people there running to the windows, shouting to each other.
As she looked south, in the direction of the Sea of Marma, she noticed a crimson light illuminating the night sky and obscuring the stars. Odd ... ominous. Then, a black wall rose in her vision, blocking out everything else, looming taller than any building in the city. It seemed distant, but how could it be far away and so huge? What was it? A thick mist fell over the bus and blew in through the open sides, like rain but warm—then hot, like a shower...
Kadijah knew then what it was: a wall of water. A tidal wave. But how, why? The blackness built and grew closer and a roar of wind and water pierced her ears. She could not hear the others screaming, nor herself, as the weight of the monster wave crushed the fragile omnibus and all its passengers and engulfed the city that had been the capital of empires for nearly two thousand years.
ABOARD THE QUEEN OF AFRICA
DECEMBER 25, 2009, 9:00 P.M. LOCAL TIME
Jane Warner had not rested or eaten a bite of food throughout the remainder of the day. She skipped dinner with a mumbled excuse to Jake. Many times she had been tempted to make a phone call: to friends at the lab, to family members, to someone—anyone in the outside world. She did not say anything to her husband, nor any of her fellow passengers, for fear of creating a panic. But during the dinner hour she did approach Dr. Hardy, the leader and organizer of the cruise, and within a few minutes of her conversation with him, he suggested they contact the ship's captain. She agreed, and Johan Nordstrom, the tall Norwegian, joined them in Dr. Hardy's stateroom. The three sat around a low glass coffee table in comfortable chairs. A tray of drinks lay there, untouched.
"Captain, Dr. Hardy, I know that what I have told you sounds fantastic; but I have it on excellent authority—and I have run the numbers myself, several times now." She glanced down at the maroon carpet on the floor of the room, finding it difficult to look at them directly. "The impact will occur at about eleven our time, which is about four in the afternoon on the East Coast, one P.M. West Coast time, in the States." Each man looked at his wristwatch. "Yes, just two hours from now," she confirmed.
Hardy removed his glasses. A widower, in his early sixties, he had a kindly if somber face, and a full head of hair streaked with gray and white. "What shall we do about it? I cannot really accept this—emotionally, that is. Intellectually, I do understand what you are saying, Dr. Warner, and I believe you, but—" He shrugged and gestured helplessly with his hands, unable to finish his statement.
Nordstrom, too, was taken aback, rapidly processing Jane's information and the implications for his ship, its crew and passengers. Inevitably, he thought of his family in Oslo, which made his heart pound painfully. There was time to contact them, and he was determined to try, before he began to prepare his vessel for... for what?
"I ask the same question as Dr. Hardy: What must we do? How will this—this thing affect us? Can you tell us, please?" His calm, polite tone barely masked the fear and sadness he was feeling. Like the American engineer, his well-trained professional mind fought to overcome the primitive, emotional responses of the human animal.
"It is possible," Jane replied, "that we will be crushed by fragments of the comet, or engulfed by huge tsunamis, or assailed by fire from the sky, flames that consume everything including our oxygen, or annihilated in some other way I can't even think of. In short, I don't know the answer. Or perhaps we might be spared. I'm dealing with numbers and uncertain suppositions." Then, seeing the look of horror and incomprehension on each man's face, Jane continued: "Captain, I feel that we should do nothing until we know more—except maybe you want to confine all the passengers to their cabins by eleven P.M. Some kind of curfew, with whatever excuse you need to use."
"Sounds like a wise suggestion to me," Hardy volunteered, and Nordstrom agreed.
So, about ten thirty, the passengers were notified of the eleven o'clock curfew, with a severe weather forecast attached. The evening had been in full swing, with continuing Christmas celebrations and cocktails or dinner being served in a number of dining rooms, many of the children still awake playing with the toys they had received earlier in the day.
Jane paced back and forth in her stateroom. Jake Warner had retired early, after a busy day of kibbitzing and cocktails, and a post-dinner poker game. She was jealous of his carefree state of ignorance. As the fateful curfew hour approached, she slipped outside and went to the port-side deck rail, looking into the black sky. Cloud shards swept past the spectacular showcase of stars.
A few minutes later, straight ahead, as she looked west northwest, she saw a thin horizon line—a dirty yellow glow—that had not been there before, that was not supposed to be there at this time of night. As she watched, transfixed, the line began to turn red and widened to a band that appeared to be approaching the ship.
She heard a piercing scream, a shriek really, in the distance from another deck level. Then nothing. She stood silently, gripping the handrail, feeling the sweat of her own palms. Then another sound, a man's voice shouting and others responding—doors opening and closing. Down along the deck passage where she stood, two doors opened and people came out and, like her, went to the railing and looked into the sky.
Next, she heard words from some of her fellow passengers: "I was on the telephone and it went dead." "They said there was some disaster." "What's happening out there—look!" "I'm scared to death. What is it?" Jane began to walk slowly along the deck as more people came outside giving vent to expressions of alarm. The sky glowed more brilliantly red, and the air around the ship became increasingly warm, then oppressively hot.
Within minutes the captain came on the loudspeaker system, sounding businesslike and composed. He stated that the glow around the ship was in some way related to the comet, which apparently had made contact with the earth. The possibility of danger for the ship—and for the world—was still unknown; but there was good reason to hope for the best. He urged everyone to remain as calm as they could, and to keep the children indoors. He stated that the ship appeared to be totally secure and undamaged and that all passengers and crew were accounted for and unharmed. He assured that all systems—radar, sonar, and particularly radio—would be kept on high alert, in an effort to make contact with other ships or people on shore.
Jane heard a child start to cry, and then another. Within minutes, the emotional atmosphere was charged with fear and despair. Jane could see, however, that the children served as a calming influence on the adults. She was not a parent herself, but she could imagine how powerful is the impulse to spare one's children from anguish. Like the father in Life Is Beautiful, which won an Oscar several years ago—the father who, for the sake of his young son, made a game out of being in a concentration camp—the parents among the passengers put on the performance of their lives.
Passengers started to gather in clusters, exchanging rumors and bits of inform
ation. Jane overheard one animated conversation among a group who had been talking on telephones or listening to short-wave radios in their cabins. She heard them repeating certain key phrases which had been gleaned from sources in various parts of the world: "red sky," "awful heat," "roaring fire," with an occasional "Oh my God!" She could not stand it any more and went back to her own cabin, where her husband had awakened and was standing half-naked outside their door.
By this time the sky was incandescent, pulsing like the light atop a police car, and the temperature was well over one hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit.
She touched Jake's arm. "I'm going to speak to the captain," she said.
"He told us to stay in our rooms. What the devil is this? It's hotter than hell out here. Is it some kind of nuclear war or something?"
As calmly as she could, she gave him the sixty-second version of the disaster. "It's the end of the world as we know it, Jake," she concluded. "You were too busy having fun today, I didn't want to spoil it for you." She left him standing there stunned, and ran up toward the bridge.
Encountering one of the ship's officers, she asked what news was coming in from the outside world. "None," was the reply. "Not a sound." Then the officer reaffirmed what the captain had said: that the ship's systems were all functioning, antennas in place, skilled operators anxiously rotating dials. But no signals had been detected—not for the last half hour. He barred her way toward the control center, saying, "The captain ordered it, ma'am—and that means everybody. That's his exact words, ma'am."
The Aftermath Page 3